In this first of our series of HTML tips, I want to give you a basic outline of what we’re going to be covering so that you can make whatever notes you need to make and be prepared for what’s to come.
HTML is not hard. The biggest problem with it is that HTML in its raw form is much unorganized. Most people don’t use proper conventions when creating web pages simply because they’re lazy, they don’t have to (most sloppy HTML will work anyway) and it’s just too much trouble. That’s why, if you look at most HTML source code in the Internet marketing niche, you won’t see anything like CSS. These people don’t know the meaning of the word.

There are some who will say that it doesn’t matter. To some degree, they are right. For your typical sales page, you really don’t have to stick to any convention. However, as you get into more complex code, you will run into trouble if you put sloppy sites together. However, aside from the trouble you’ll run into with people accessing your site there is an even bigger issue here.

As sites get more and more unwieldy, they become harder to fix. Before I realized how important it is to have CSS for a 127 page web site, I literally had a nightmare on my hand when I realized that I had to make a change to one of these monsters and instead of being able to simply make one change to one line of code in a CSS file, I had to go to 127 different web pages and change 127 lines of code. It was not fun.

So aside from learning some basic HTML tips and tricks, I’m also going to teach you how to structure your pages so that if you do have to change something, whether it be for yourself or a customer, you won’t have to go through the hell that I went through when I first started learning HTML and how to create web pages.

After we’ve covered some of the basics, I’ll show you some cool tricks and things you can do to make your web pages look a little fancier. I’ll also show you many shortcuts so that you’re not spending forever doing this stuff. Web design is a means to an ends. It is not something you want to labor over. When I first started, I admit, I used to love to look at my web sites and see how they evolved. But as I realized that I was doing this to ultimately earn an income and not to admire my creations, I became more focused and more disciplined.

Naturally, I can’t teach you everything, unless I wrote 20 volumes on this topic alone, which I have no intention of doing if for no other reason than not everybody wants to learn that much web design. However, you will learn enough to get you through the things you will need to do for your Internet marketing needs and to do them quickly and efficiently. That is the bottom line.

So, sit back, relax and in the next article, we’ll get right into the tips.